This copy is for your personal non-commercial use only. To order presentation-ready copies of Toronto Star content for distribution to colleagues, clients or customers, or inquire about permissions/licensing, please go to: www.TorontoStarReprints.com

The timing could not have been more dramatic, even if it had been orchestrated by Harvey Weinstein, the famously shrewd Hollywood showman who is releasing
Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom
just in time for the movie world’s award season.

The occasion was the celebrity-studded European premiere of the movie in London at the Odeon Leicester Square.

Idris Elba
, the Golden Globe-winning 41-year-old British actor who plays the world’s most revered political leader in this adaptation of Mandela’s autobiography, was seated near the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge.

As Elba later explained on British radio, he noticed that Kate looked quite emotional, and wondered whether something was wrong or she was just responding to the power of the film.

Article Continued Below

Then Elba’s girlfriend checked her phone and gave him the news. The announcement had just come from South Africa: Nelson Mandela was dead.

Three months earlier, when I met Elba in a hotel room the day after the movie’s world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival, he began our interview by admitting that he was far from obvious casting for the role.

“I look nothing like Nelson Mandela,” he said. “I’m not South African, either. And there were a lot of people who felt the part should be played by a South African. But Justin wanted to capture the spirit of the man.”

That’s Justin Chadwick, the director of the film, who comes from Manchester.

“Justin said he wanted an actor who could be courageous and fearless,” Elba explained. “And I definitely wanted to be that. My favourite actor is Meryl Streep, who is always happy to lose herself in a role.”

Maybe, but Elba is better-looking and more charismatic than Streep, and in person he doesn’t hide his star power or his forceful personality.

It’s not hard to figure out why Chadwick thought he’d be the right guy for this role of a lifetime, and not just because his portrayal of Stringer Bell in HBO’s
The Wire
made him a cult figure a decade earlier.

Chadwick knew the actor playing Mandela would have big shoes to fill and that millions of people had a strong sense of who Mandela was. He also knew he was looking for something way beyond an impressionist.

Elba was in Toronto making another film when he got a phone call saying Chadwick wanted to consider him for the part.

“I was floored,” Elba recalled. “I didn’t realize this could come my way. I decided to read the script. And the next thing I knew, we were on the way to making it.”

As Chadwick told me in another interview the same day, “I wanted to scratch under the surface. I had a chance to spend time with Winnie and Mandela’s daughters, and they were incredibly open. I felt free to show Mandela as a young man.”

Chadwick was lucky enough to meet Mandela himself. “At 93, he had this electricity coming from him, so I got excited thinking about what he must have been like as a young man. I felt energized by the whole process. It was a life-changing experience for me and not just as a filmmaker.”

People old enough to have known Mandela as a young man remember him as a brilliant lawyer and orator, but they also remember the magnetism when he entered a room.

And if there’s one thing Elba brings to the screen, it’s magnetism.

Elba was encouraged by Chadwick’s decision to focus on the part of Mandela’s life that not many people knew about, before he became a celebrated world leader.

“That gave us a bit of licence,” Elba said.

Indeed, for me the most memorable parts of the movie are the ones dealing with his family, especially the scene in which his daughter Zindzi (Lindiwe Matshikiza) visits him in jail.

“That prison scene is very poignant,” says Elba, who is known for being extremely critical of his own work.

But it would be hard to match the poignancy of the moment when some people checked their phones and learned Mandela had died.

At the time, onscreen Mandela was saying, “Open the gates and let me go free.”

A decision was made not to interrupt the screening.

As the credits rolled and the audience stood up and applauded, Elba walked to the stage and said, “Please sit down.”

The Toronto Star and thestar.com, each property of Toronto Star Newspapers Limited, One Yonge Street, 4th Floor, Toronto, ON, M5E 1E6. You can unsubscribe at any time. Please contact us or see our privacy policy for more information.

More from the Toronto Star & Partners

LOADING

Copyright owned or licensed by Toronto Star Newspapers Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or distribution of this content is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Toronto Star Newspapers Limited and/or its licensors. To order copies of Toronto Star articles, please go to: www.TorontoStarReprints.com